A database of approximately 593,000 Alaska voter records has been exposed online.
TargetSmart, the company that owns the data, claims that it was not accessed by anyone other than the security researchers on their team and the team that identified the exposure.
Tom Bonier, the Chief Executive Officer of TargetSmart, confirmed the breach and said in a statement that Equals3, a software company based in Minnesota, “Appears to have failed to secure some of their data and some data they license...

While France bars contributions from businesses, loans are allowed. A Russian bank made headlines in recent years after lending millions of euros to the far-right National Front party of Marine Le Pen. After that bank failed last year, the party complained that it had been shunned by French banks and declared itself in the market for a new lender.
If nothing else, European far-right parties are gaining newly emboldened allies.
“I expect the Trump administration to be more open to these part...

French President Emmanuel Macron’s party, La Republique En Marche, won a resounding victory Sunday in the final round of the country’s parliamentary elections, gaining a commanding majority in the National Assembly.
The victory, which dramatically reshapes French politics, is particularly remarkable given that Macron’s party is just a year old and many of its elected representatives are new to government. Macron himself was practically unknown a year ago. But amid a fracturing of support for...

WASHINGTON ― Before the scandal broke over their improper use of Facebook user data, British consulting firm Cambridge Analytica and its parent, SCL Group, plied their trade of political subterfuge for clients in developing countries.
Call it techno-colonialism — the idea that the leaner parts of the world are where you go to conduct your beta tests. Like so much else about Cambridge Analytica and SCL, they were merely putting a sinister flourish on something the tech industry does as a matt...

A secretive data and technology company linked to conservative oil billionaires Charles and David Koch has reached an agreement to share its information with the “voter file and data management company” that holds an exclusive agreement with the Republican National Committee. This will allow the Republican Party full access to voter data collected by the Koch’s Freedom Partners entities and clients — and entrenches the Kochs’ network even deeper into the GOP.
Because political parties are no...

Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Cambridge Analytica CEO Alexander Nix has been suspended amid the controversy
The company accused of using the personal data of millions of Facebook users to influence how people vote is not shy about its international portfolio.
Political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica is facing questions over whether it used personal data to sway the outcome of the US 2016 presidential election and the UK Brexit referendum.
But its reach extends well beyond...

An undercover investigation by Channel 4 News confirmed the firm's involvement with the Institutional Revolutionary Party.
A link between Cambridge Analytica, the controversial political consulting firm linked to U.S. President Donald Trump, and Mexico's governing Institutional Revolutionary Party has been uncovered in an investigative report by British broadcaster Channel 4 News.
The report, which was published the day before Mexico's presidential election campaigns began, reveals Cambridg...

Conservative party donors are among the investors in the company that spawned the election consultancy at the centre of a storm about use of data from Facebook.
Filings for SCL Group, which is at the top of a web of companies linked to Cambridge Analytica, show that since its conception in 2005 its shareholders and officers have included a wine millionaire who has given more than £700,000 to the party, a former Conservative MP, and a peer who was a business minister under David Cameron.
On ...

It’s common knowledge that political parties in the United States collect information about potential voters, but exactly how comprehensive is the data they collet?
To explore that question, we set out to find detailed descriptions of 176 data points the Republican National Committee (RNC) has been gathering about voters since at least 2008. The data points were published on June 19 by a cybersecurity company after one of its analysts found a trove of voter records that had been inadvertentl...

On 7 April 2016, Emmanuel Macron took to the stage in front of a few hundred people in his hometown of Amiens and proposed something that even he admitted “might seem a bit crazy here tonight”. He was starting a national political movement. The economy minister of 20 months, who had never stood before in an election, sensed an opportunity. “I don’t know if it’s going to work,” admitted the then-38-year-old.
Emmanuel Macron’s appeal has already worn thin | Gabriel Bristow Read more
Just over...